


primary colours

by manicpixieidiot



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, First Meetings, First Pride, M/M, Pride, alternative universe, but i didn't mean to, meeting at Pride, wrote this instead of sleeping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24605038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manicpixieidiot/pseuds/manicpixieidiot
Summary: Dan is lost at Pride until he isn't.
Relationships: Dan Howell & Phil Lester, Dan Howell/Phil Lester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 24





	primary colours

**Author's Note:**

> my hand slipped and i wrote this little drabble thingy, even though i was working on something else entirely, but enjoy!
> 
> could be read as both platonic or romantic

There’s flags waving in the wind. They’re in all the colour of the rainbow, literally. Sometimes all in one flag, sometimes spread out over a few. Sometimes there’s colour that aren’t in the rainbow. They mean different things, they symbolises different things. But really they all just symbolise diversity.

Dan grips tighter one the small flag he’s holding. Somewhere internally he is still debating whether he should have brought a bigger one, instead of this small paper one who’s probably going to break very soon. Maybe a bigger one would have made him more empowered, made him feel less scared, less vulnerable. But who’s he kidding? The size of flag, no matter how bright the colours, wasn’t going to be the factor changing that.

This is his first pride and there’s people all over. Yet he still feels quite alone, perhaps even more than ordinarily when he’s at home. And it’s not like he doesn’t know anyone here; he’s here with a group of friends, or more like acquaintances really. They’re all better friends with each other than any of them are with him. And that’s okay, really, he is just happy that they gave him an opportunity to come along without being completely alone. However, he still just feels very alone.

“ _Daniel!_ ”

Why do they call him that? Nobody does that, not really; it doesn’t feel like him.

“Mate c’mon, you got to keep up,” they’re yelling at him, it’s only because there’s already so much else noise around, but he isn’t a fan of either anyway, “-don’t get lost in the crowd! _Daniel!_ ”

He does get lost in the crowd, and it feels like it’s entirely his own fault. He desperately wants to be back with his not-really-friends now that he’s lost them. They were still his safety blanket even though he wasn’t enjoying his time with them very much. But the prospect of being without them, however, is still so much scarier.

There’s still people all around, happy people, cheerful people, waving their colourful flags all around. Dan’s not sure if the flags match the people or the people match the flags, but they’re almost equally colourful. And a part of Dan does want to match them too, but on the other hand he would feel naked and vulnerable if he wasn’t wearing anything black. So that’s the colour he clings to, another safety blanket.

But he wants to match their happiness even more than their colours, even though the prospect of that, is just as scary. It’s the unknown, it wouldn’t be what he’s used to, and he’s not sure how to handle any of that. But maybe he will figure it out some day. Maybe soon. Maybe.

He wishes he could absorb some of this happiness, there’s so much of it, all around him. They’d probably be happy to share too, maybe even with someone like Dan. But that’s just not possible, that’s not how life works, that’s not how humans works. You can’t just lend your happiness to someone else, donate it to someone who needs it.. Dan is still caught up in the thought of it all when he bumps into someone else, almost knocking them over before he manages to catch onto an arm, trying to minimise the damage.

“Sorry!” he says, adding that to his mental list of Reasons Why Dan’s A Fail.

He just laughs, so happily, the other guy, the one Dan almost knocked over.

“Oh it’s not your fault,” his tongue is poking through his teeth, it’s weird, but endearingly so, “I’m just a very clumsy person.”

He is still grinning, almost emitting warmth, even though Dan’s already warm, it’s June, and he’s wearing black for fucks sake, but still, it’s a different kind of warmth.

There’s glitter on his checks, and over the bridge of his nose, it’s mainly blue, like some kind of weird alien freckles. It’s also somehow the warmest kind of blue Dan has ever seen, and it also matches his eyes. How do they seem more blue than his bizarre glitter freckles?

Dan kind of thinks he could drown in those eyes, but only the good kind of drowning, whatever that would be. Maybe something about relinquishing control, just for a moment. Just letting those eyes warm him, letting the kindness in them be directed at him.

“Hey you alright?” Blue Eyes asks him as he’s abruptly pulled away from his progressively spiralling thoughts.

“Oh- yeah, ehm- sure?” Dan decides to dodge the actual direction of the question a bit, trying to ignore the moment where he just totally spaced out for a bit, “I think I lost my friends, I guess.”

“You guess?” Blue Eyes looks around, as trying to figure out who has lost this hopelessly out of place person dressed mostly in black at Pride, but he’s eyes never really land of anybody and he just shakes his head.

He’s tall, Dan notes. Maybe not quite as tall as him, but very close. It’s both comforting and intimidating in a way, Dan doesn’t have to hunch over just to get properly on eye-level with him. Besides, that bit of slouch he almost always has makes him almost exactly the same height as him, at least when Blue Eyes is looking keenly around like that, back straightened and eyes alert.

“I don’t know how your friends look,” his eyes settle back on Dan again, “but I can’t see anybody looking for you.”

“That’s okay,” Dan simply nods, “I’ll probably find my way back to them eventually or something,” he accompanies the last part with a shrug, just for good measure.

Blue Eyes raises his eyebrows at him, “you can’t be all by yourself at Pride!”

He expression is rather comical, almost shocked, but more just aggrieved.

He continues, “it’s simply not as fun! Besides, isn’t this a place for making new friends?”

Dan finds himself nodding slowly, because Blue Eyes does indeed have very blue eyes, and Dan did really lose his friends in the crowd, and the thought of venturing out through the masses in a sort of harrowing lonesome journey really doesn’t sound very appealing to him, even though harrowing and lonesome could sound like him in just about any other context.

“Great!” Blue Eyes is smiling again, this time without the tongue poking through, and Dan decides that he would like to see more of both these smiles.

“Also, I’m Phil,” not-actually-blues-eyes says, “thought you should know that, since i’m saving you from,” he jerks his hand indistinctly at the crowd, “whatever.”

Dan also finds himself smiling at this point, maybe lending people a bit of your happiness is actually possible, or maybe Phil’s smile is just really that infectious. Or maybe those are actually the same thing, or at least as close to as possible.

“I’m Dan,” he answers shortly before looking down, only to realise that his hand is still tightly grasped around Phil’s arm, where it had caught him, stopping him from falling.

He feels a slight blush creeping up his cheeks, reddening his face, but all he can think about is how it’s probably a nice contrast to Phil’s blue eyes, and Phil’s blue glitter.

The sun is shining bright and yellow, Phil is glittering with blue freckles which match his eyes, Dan has flushed a deep red, and yet he doesn’t feel quite as lost anymore, especially as every colour in between is flickering everywhere around them.

**Author's Note:**

> most of this is written after midnight, and i might have slipped into a bit of a peculiar writing style, but idk? felt it worked okay for a drabble-ish thing.
> 
> my main is also @hereandqueer-eek on tumblr, so do come talk to be there if you want to! and please leave a kudos if you enjoyed this :)


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